This Is The Kind of Information Genealogists Want About Their mtDNA...

In his article, Blah, Blah, Blah on his blog The Latest in Meandering Thought..., Brian Miller writes about recently receiving his mtDNA test results. He didn't get much information about haplogroup H so you won't learn anything new from reading his post. But he did share a good bit of what I thought was fascinating information about his Y-DNA haplogroup Q. I mention this only because it's a good example of the kind of information that I think genealogists would appreciate getting when they receive their test results.

But today I found a little piece of information that I found interesting, if for no other reason than that it was personally interesting. I discovered an article that stated that the predominant haplogroup Q population is from northern Eurasia and is mongoloid in physical traits, versus caucasoid which is predominantly of European descent. Mongoloids are distinguished by "non-projecting noses, flat faces formed by forward projecting cheekbones, round eye orbits, shovel-shaped incisors, and complex cranial sutures, flattened chins, elliptic dental archs and brachycephalic (short and broad) skulls". Hm. The article went on to discuss... [More]

I get that this group is much smaller than hg H and that H's members may not have definable physical features like this group so I'm not thinking that this very same type of information is necessarily available for hg H. But I do think that this is substantive information that a genealogist might want to include as part of a chapter on DNA in their published family history.

If anyone from any of the genealogy testing companies happens to be reading this, please take my request to heart. I'm asking you to consult with the anthropology departments from a couple of different universities and see what can be said about those who migrated to Europe from the Middle East 20,000-30,000 years ago and share it with us. Not everyone wants to use mtDNA as a tool to determine ancestry. Many of us just want to know what life was like for our mitochondrial cousins of yesteryear without having to major in anthropology.

And another thing... What about the gene mutation for blue eyes... didn't that happen about 20,000 years ago too? Could it be that our "Helena" was the first blue-eyed mutant? Hmmm? Has anyone thought about that? Well... get busy and investigate! LOL!

OK. I'll get down off my soapbox and we can return to our regularly scheduled program.